Though they’re made from blocks of compacted snow, igluit (igloos) keep their residents well-sheltered by insulating from the cold and wind outside. In this 360° video from The New York Times, Adami Sakiagak and Tiisi Qisiiq build igloos outside of Kangiqsujuaq, Quebec on the first day of summer.
Mr. Sakiagak’s parents were born in igloos and he learned to build the snow domes with his father growing up on the open tundra as a child. Now, Mr. Sakiagak, a 57-year-old Inuit, builds them to teach younger generations the disappearing craft.
“At one time people had no camps,” he said, referring to shelters now scattered across traditional hunting and fishing grounds. “And any person who went out onto the land, they usually built an igloo.”
Read more in Igloo Making, A Lost Art in the Arctic, including this:
Engineers say the Inuit, through trial and error, devised a design based on a parabola, not a semicircle, eliminating the forces that would make a true hemisphere bulge and collapse. Snow is an excellent insulator, trapping air between the snowflakes, while white reflects light and heat, so most of the heat generated inside an igloo stays there.
Turn this full screen video around while watching on your phone or navigate the 360° view on your computer. Be sure to look up as they finish the top.
Igloos can look awesome at night, too. Check out these time lapses in the High Arctic from photographer Clare Kines:
Follow this with a clip from A Boy Among Polar Bears and the National Film Board of Canada’s How to Build an Igloo (1949), a TKSST favorite.
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